José Luis Cuevas is a Mexican artist and was one of the first to challenge the then dominant Mexican muralism movement as a prominent member of the Generación de la Ruptura (Breakaway Generation). He is a mostly self-taught artist, whose styles and influences are moored to the darker side of life, often depicting distorted figures and the debasement of humanity. He has remained a controversial figure throughout his career, not only for his often shocking images, but also for his opposition to writers and artists who he feels participate in corruption or create only for money. In 1992, the José Luis Cuevas Museum was opened in the historic center of Mexico City holding most of his work and his personal art collection.

José Luis Cuevas was born on February 26, 1934, to a middle-class family in Mexico City. He was born on the upper floor of the paper and pencil factory belonging to his paternal grandfather, Adalberto Cuevas.[1][2] Cuevas himself stated that “perhaps because I was born in a paper mill and pencil factory, paper has always held a great fascination for me.[2] He attended primary school in Colonia Roma, where his family moved to live after his grandfather died.[1]" He spent his childhood observing people on the streets and places such as the public market, which then he would recreate using bits of colored paper from his grandfather’s factory.[2] His talent manifested early, winning first place in a children's competition for a self-portrait entitled “Niño Obrero” (Child Laborer). The award gained him the nickname of “el güerito pintor” ("the little fair-skinned painter.[1][3]")

At age fourteen, he rented a space on Donceles street to use as a studio instead of returning to school as his poor health meant that did not know how long he might live. He decided it would be better to dedicate himself to his art. He worked on illustrations for The News,[4] and despite his lack of formal training, he taught art history classes at Coronet Hall Institute.[1]

One element of his training was the opportunity to visit the La Castaneda mental hospital where his brother worked to draw the patients.[3]

Cuevas has been described as vain, a pathological liar and a hypochondriac, obsessed with sickness and death, especially his own.[4] Writer René Avilés Fabila once said that “The greatest love of José Luis Cuevas is named José Luis Cuevas, because he is an artist more in love with himself than with his work.” The reason for this quote is that he has done so many self-portraits that it is like having a large number of mirrors.[5] Jose Luis Cuevas has stated that he does not believe he is vain and says that idea started in 1955 when he decided to take a picture of himself every day, which he continues to do up to now.[4] He is one of the most photographed contemporary artists of Mexico.[6] One ludicrous story states that he visited a “vampire brothel” where they scratch and paw at customers.[citation needed] Other story relates him to a 70-year-old woman named Gloria who he tried to seduce and another one that Marlene Dietrich threw herself at him.[4] He admits to be a bit paranoid and defensive, concerned about being cast in a negative light.[citation needed] He claims Julio Scherer García as an enemy for interfering with his writing career. He also had feuds with painter Rufino Tamayo.[4] He claims that José Chávez Morado, Guillermo González Camarena and the "Frente Popular de Artes Plasticas" were envious of him and accused him of working with the CIA in the 1950s when he was coming out after mainstream artists.[4] Even today, he makes deferences by opening his museum to all of his friends but those he considers enemies are not permitted inside.[7]

Cuevas married his first wife, Bertha Riestra, in 1961.[1] He met Bertha at the La Castaneda hospital while she was there doing community service and painting. Her parents did not attend the wedding as they did not approve of him since he was an artist.[4] Despite being married, he gained a reputation as a womanizer, nicknamed “gato macho” (male cat) or seducer of women, which he took advantage of to promote himself.[4] In a Mexico City newspaper column written by him, he claimed he had over 650 erotic encounters.[4] He states that Bertha was not allowed the same freedom and that she never knew about his affairs despite his writings about them.[4]

From 1976 to 1979, he “self-exiled”, leaving Mexico for France, working on various books, serigraphs and lithographs for publication. When he returned to Mexico, he presented the exhibition “José Luis Cuevas. El regreso de otro hijo pródigo.” (José Luis Cuevas. The return of another prodigal son).[1][4]

In 2000, Berta Riestra, his wife and, at the time, the director of the Jose Luis Cuevas Museum, passed away due to breast cancer and leukemia. The following year, he met Beatriz del Carmen Bazán, whom he married in 2003 at the museum.[1][4]

Today, Cuevas and his wife both live in the San Ángel neighborhood of Mexico City. The house was built for Cuevas in the 1970s by architects Abraham Zabludovsky and Teodoro González de León in a style reminiscent of Luis Barragán. The walls are tones of gray with very straight lines. The interior is minimalist with paintings by the artist on the walls and wood furniture with Mexican textiles. While the house is clean and orderly, the space dedicated as his studio is messy, strewn with books, old machinery, a telescope, mirrors, many photographs and more.[6]

He has predicted that he will live to over a hundred because various tarot readings have told him so.[8]

With a career that spans over seventy years, Cuevas has been a painter, writer, draftsman, engraver, illustrator and printmaker[2][3][9] Cuevas has had solo exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the world.[10] His first exhibition was when he was only fourteen at the Seminario Axiologico but no one came, the works came off the walls and were stepped on.[2][4] His first successful individual exhibition was at Mexico City’s Galería Prisse in 1953, when he was nineteen.[1][2] In 1954, he exhibited in Mérida and at the Panamerican Union in Washington, DC.[1] His first US exhibition resulted in interviews with Time and the Washington Post, which called him a “golden boy,” opening doors and helping to sell his paintings.[4] In 1955, he participated in the first Salón de Arte Libre organized by Galería Proteo, where he met David Alfaro Siqueiros. During the rest of the 1950s, he exhibited in Havana, Caracas, Lima and Buenos Aires, where he met Jorge Luis Borges.[1]

In the 1960 he exhibited at the David Herbert Gallery, when the NY Times compared him to Picasso. In 1961, two of his works at the Galería del L’Oblisco in Rome, Los Funerales de un Dictador and La Caída de Franco caused a diplomatic conflict with Spain that asked the images to be removed. In 1962, he exhibited a series of works based on a sculpture by Tilman Riemenschneide he saw in Munich. Other exhibitions include the Silvan Simone Gallery in 1967.[1]

During the 1970s, he exhibited 72 self-portrait at the Centro Cultural Universitario at UNAM, and exhibited other works at the San Francisco Museum of Art, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Caracas, Phoenix Art Museum, the Musee d’Art Moderne in Paris and the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City.[1] In 1976, he had four women tattooed with original designs of his own making, so that the art “would grow old with him” This despite the fact that tattoos were illegal in Mexico at the time.[4]

In 1981, he opened the exhibit "Signs of Life" which contained a vial with his semen and an electrocardiogram taken while he was making love. He stated in the exhibition's brochure that he would impregnate any woman that asked him to do so, but the Secretaría de Gobernación made him to remove the brochure because it was then-considered as act of prostitution.[4] In 1982, fourteen galleries in Mexico City, Barcelona, Paris and others held a simultaneous exhibits of “Marzo. Mes de José Luis Cuevas” ("March. Month of Jose Luis Cuevas.") From 1984 to 1988, a series of drawings called “Intolerance” toured universities and museums in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Europe.[1]

In 2001, he donated a sculpture called “Figura Obscena” (Obscene Figure) to the city of Colima. This sculpture became the center of a scandal in 2006.[1] Other exhibitions from the 2000s to the present include “José Luis Cuevas en la mitad del Mundo” in 2005, “Exposición Siameses 50 Años de la Plástica del Maestro José Luis Cuevas” in 2009 and 2011 and “Dibujo y Escultura” in 2010. In 2006, he inaugurated the Paseo Escultórico Nezahualcóyotl with a sculpture named after his wife called “Carmen.” He continues to actively exhibit his work, especially in Mexico.[1]

By the age of fourteen, he had illustrated numerous periodicals and books.[10] In 1957, he went to Philadelphia to illustrate the book “The World of Kafka and Cuevas” for Falcon Prest Publishers.[1] In the late 1950s, he began to write on cultural topics for the Novedades de México publication, where he referred to the then mural artists establishment such as Diego Rivera as the “cortina del nopal” (Nopal Cactus Curtain) and also advocated for greater artistic freedom. This philosophy inspired the founding in 1960 of the group Nueva Presencia, which he joined for a brief time. The group promoted individual expression and figurative art reflecting the contemporary human condition.[1][10]

In the 1960s, publications included “Recollections of Childhood” (1963), “Cuevas-Chareton” (1966), a book of lithographs made at the Tamarind Workshop in Los Angeles inspired by the Marquis de Sade and “Homage to Quevedo” an album of thirteen lithographs dedicated to Francisco de Quevedo.[1][3]

In 1970, he presented “Crime by Cuevas” at the Primera Bienal del Grabado Latinoamericano in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The lithographic series called “Cuevas Comedies” was published in 1972, inspired by San Francisco.[1][3] He “self-exiled” to France where he exhibited at the Modern Art Museum in Paris and the Chartres Cathedral and worked on several books, serigraphs and lithographs in works called “Cuaderno de París” and “La Renaudiere.” The first was honored at the Book Fair in Stuttgart, Germany in 1978.[1]

In 1985, he began publishing a column called “Cuevario.” In 1987 he worked with the Crónica de la Ciudad de México. He published Arte-Objeto and Animales Impuros in 1995, which was inspired by a poem by José-Miguel Ullán. In 2012 he published “Cartas amorosas a Beatriz del Carmen” which contains 183 cards drawn by Cuevas for his wife.[1][3]

Cuevas was born and raised on a country that has produced major innovators in the fine arts, and he himself has become a symbol of both the continuity of this tradition as well as a permanent break with the past.[7] In particular, Cuevas was an early and very outspoken critic of the muralist movement by the then-dominant artists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros.[11] His critiques focus on how these artists depicted Mexican social intertwine and how much their art was influenced by government propaganda through sponsorship.[2][11] His opposition to the status quo and his aggressive art style have caused him trouble at times, including violent public outcry to his work, written insults, personal threats and even having his own house attacked with a machine-gun once.[2][11] These are some of the reasons that earned him the nickname of "il enfant terrible" ("The Bad Boy") of Mexican fine arts.[9][12]

His initial opposition to Mexican cultural status quo was with the muralists, calling them and the government that supported them the “nopal cactus curtain,” acting against newer artists and innovations.[13] His first essay against the “nopal cactus curtain,” was to be published by Excélsior but ultimately rejected by the latter, although he later renamed and published it as “Letter to Siqueiros” in a magazine titled "Perfumes y Modas" ("Perfumes and Fashions") and dropped off a copy of the magazine at Siqueiros’s house. Later, with the help of Carlos Fuentes he published in "Museo en la Cultura" ("Museum in Culture"), a supplement of Novedades newspaper, where he continued his critique towards the Mexican muralist movement. Throughout this time, he became friends with a number of other writers such as Fernando Benitez, José Emilio Pacheco, José de la Colina, Carlos Monsiváis who, along with writer Carlos Fuentes, were known as “La Maffia” a critique group of Mexico’s then-current culture. It also earned him scorn and critique, especially from Leopoldo Mendez and Raúl Anguiano, as well as strong opposition from many at the Academy of San Carlos. Despite this opposition, Siqueiros wanted Cuevas to become part of the muralist group, saying that his work had an Orozco quality.[4] Since that time, the muralism tradition has waned but Cuevas still remains a controversial and oppositional figure, criticizing writers and artists he feels criticize the country’s corruption and other problems but at the same time participating in them. He also states that his strongly against those who he feels use art for “fraudulent” ends as well as those who copy others’ work and those who sell out their art only to make money.[11]

Themes in Cuevas’ work tend to be bleak, grotesque, enveloped in anguish and fantasy, with human figures distorted to the point of uniqueness.[10][13] His work has been described as having a “great gestural ferocity” often preferring subjects relating to human degradation such as prostitution and despotism.[9] His most characteristic work involves images of disfigured creatures and the misery of the contemporary world.[3] Although he is not against worldly pleasures, he does not depict them in his work. He states that his work leans more towards the flesh in an “excessive” way with the presence of death. Cuevas has said that his drawing represents the solitude and isolation of contemporary man and man's inability to communicate. He also states that it is an “invitation to return to vegetarianism.[10][11]"

Cuevas has stated that he has never drawn a skull as he considers them devoid of expression and they are not necessarily representative of death in Mexican culture. He prefers to draw cadavers and bodies shortly after death, as they still retain the individual human qualities. In this, he states that he follows elements of German Expressionism, Catalan Romanesque and Romanticism of the 19th century. He feels very “Spanish” in this as Goya used to paint cadavers as well and yet, far from José Guadalupe Posada who drew skulls and bones.[2][11] His work has been influenced by Spanish poetry and Spanish cities as Seville and Barcelona have appeared in his works.[13] His predilection for the darker side of life along with breaking with tradition has meant late acceptance in certain circles of the art market.[11]

Cuevas’s style is aggressive and lacks inhibition which often shocks the observer.[7] Cuevas’s drawings, which were done in pen and ink, gouache and watercolor, are mostly done on very large sheets of paper. In many of these drawings, the figures transform into animals or acquire an animal quality.[2] Well acquainted with the cinematic arts, he has manipulated data and even concocted events, drawing on his memory for plausible details.[7] His best known event of this type was the creation of the “Mural Efímero” (Ephemeral Mural), which he created and immediately destroyed publically as a challenge to the Mexican muralism movement.[1] He gave what is now known as “Zona Rosa” its name, located in the then cosmopolitan section of Colonia Juarez, stating that "Es demasiado ingenua para ser roja, pero demasiado frívola para ser blanca, por eso es precisamente rosa" ("it's too naive to be red, but too frivolous to be white, that's why it is precisely pink.[14]")

His work still creates controversy and his appearances attract large numbers of women.[12]

Cuevas’ earliest award was in 1959, the International First Prize for Drawing at the São Paulo Biennale, with 40 works from the series Funeral of a Dictator, which was followed by First Prize at the International Black and White Exhibition in Lugano, Switzerland in 1962.[2][10] Other awards during the 1960s include the Prize for Excellence in Art and Design at the 29th Annual Exhibition of the Art Directors’ Club, Philadelphia in 1964, Premio Madeco at the II Bienal Iberoamericana de Grabado at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Chile in 1965 and First International Prize for Printmaking, Triennial of Graphic Arts, New Delhi, India, 1968.[2][10]

In 1977 he won First Prize at the III Latin American Print Biennial in San Juan, Puerto Rico .[10] In 1981, he earned the National Prize of Culture, which signified his acceptance by the people of Mexico.[2] Other honors in the 1980s include representing Mexico at the 1982 Venice Biennial, Premio Nacional de Arte from the Mexican government in the same year, and the International Prize from the World Council of Engraving in the United States.[1][10]

In the late 1980s, Cuevas obtained the old monastery of Santa Inés in Mexico City's historical center for the purpose of creating the José Luis Cuevas Museum, which was inaugurated in 1992. The first director of the museum was his first wife, Bertha until her death in 2000. In 2005, his second wife, Beatriz del Carmen, took over operations.[1] The Museum has been backed by the Fundación Maestro José Luis Cuevas since 2003.[15]

The Museum's collection includes more than 1860 pieces by various artists, mostly from Latin America. The pieces are rotated among the various building's rooms. One of the main pieces is "La Giganta" ("The Giantess") by Cuevas, which is fixed in the central courtyard.[16] The androgynous sculpture was created in 1991, inspired by a poem by Baudelaire.[1][7] The museum is considered to be controversial in no small part due to the “Erotic Room," filled with his own drawings on the theme from actual bordellos and cabarets, and the presence of a large brass bed on which he claims he had many sexual encounters[7][12] The museum also contains a library with 45 large volumes with over 11,500 newspaper clippings as well as 500 books dedicated to his work.[4]